STENSON LEADS BY FOUR AT TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP

Henrik Stenson was off to his now-traditional turbo-charged start at the Tour Championship on Saturday, and an elite field was becoming but confetti in his slipstream.

His lead compounded by the minute: Four shots. Five. Seven. Good heavens, nine by the time he made the turn of his third round. He had gone past the point of beating these guys and had begun the process of lapping them.

Then the rain picked up.

Ah, blessed rain. It does make the grass grow and the leads shrink.

Stenson suddenly began visiting some of the exotic locations on the other side of the gallery ropes. Where before he was humming, now he was hiccuping. By the time he made the squishy walk to the clubhouse, his lead was back to a more reality-based number, four strokes, over Dustin Johnson.

“I’ll choose to look at it from the bright side,” Stenson said. “I started the day with a four-shot lead, and I still got it. So that’s all that really matters.”

Despite the wild mood swings of his Saturday, Stenson still finished with his third subpar round of the tournament, a 69, to go to 11-under overall. Johnson, the last player to make this 30-man field, put himself in contention for at least the Tour Championship title, if not the $10 million FedEx Cup bonus, with a 67 (7-under for the tournament).

Nobody’s been able to get close enough to Stenson to much perturb him this week, a bit of a shock considering that only the best were invited to this party. Some of that is Stenson’s doing.

Tiger Woods, the No. 1 FedEx Cup seed, is 14 strokes back of Stenson.

Elsewhere

Escondido native Mark Wiebe shot a second-round 69 for a two-shot lead over Vijay Singh in the Champions Tour’s Pacific Links Hawaii at Kapoleai, Hawaii.

• Rod Perry and Jeff Sorenson contributed birdies on their last four holes and the Americans took a 10½-5½ lead over Great Britain & Ireland in the PGA Cup at Hexham, England.

• Marcus Fraser shot a 4-under 68, giving the Australian a one-stroke lead over Italy’s Francesco Molinari, Belgium’s Nicolas Colsaerts and Sweden’s Joakim Lagergren after three rounds of the Italian Open at Turin, Italy.